Skip navigation
Skip navigation

Young relicts and old relicts: a novel palaeoendemic vertebrate from the Australian Central Uplands

Oliver, Paul M; McDonald, Peter J

Description

Climatic change, and in particular aridification, has played a dominant role in shaping Southern Hemisphere biotas since the mid-Neogene. In Australia, ancient and geologically stable ranges within the vast arid zone have functioned as refugia for populations of mesic taxa extirpated from surrounding areas, yet the extent to which relicts may be linked to major aridification events before or after the Pliocene has not been examined in detail. Here we use molecular phylogenetic and morphological...[Show more]

dc.contributor.authorOliver, Paul M
dc.contributor.authorMcDonald, Peter J
dc.date.accessioned2018-08-28T04:49:09Z
dc.date.available2018-08-28T04:49:09Z
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1885/146664
dc.description.abstractClimatic change, and in particular aridification, has played a dominant role in shaping Southern Hemisphere biotas since the mid-Neogene. In Australia, ancient and geologically stable ranges within the vast arid zone have functioned as refugia for populations of mesic taxa extirpated from surrounding areas, yet the extent to which relicts may be linked to major aridification events before or after the Pliocene has not been examined in detail. Here we use molecular phylogenetic and morphological data to show that isolated populations of saxicoline geckos in the genus Oedura from the Australian Central Uplands, formerly confounded as a single taxon, actually comprise two divergent species with contrasting histories of isolation. The recently resurrected Oedura cincta has close relatives occurring elsewhere in the Australian arid biomes with estimated divergence dates concentrated in the early Pliocene. A new taxon (described herein) diverged from all extant Oedura much earlier, well before the end of the Miocene. A review of data for Central Uplands endemic vertebrates shows that for most (including Oedura cincta), gene flow with other parts of Australia probably occurred until at least the very late Miocene or Pliocene. There are, however, a small number of palaeoendemic taxa-often ecologically specialized forms-that show evidence of having persisted since earlier intensification of aridity in the late Miocene.
dc.description.sponsorshipThis work was supported by a linkage grant from the Australian Research Council to P.M.O., Mark Adams, Michael Lee and Paul Doughty; an Australian Research Council Early Career Researcher Fellowship to P.M.O., the Australian National University and the Northern Territory Department of Land and Resource Management.
dc.format16 pages
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.publisherRoyal Society, The
dc.rights© 2016 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
dc.sourceRoyal Society open science
dc.subjectpliocene
dc.subjectaridification
dc.subjectclimate change
dc.subjectevolutionary refugia
dc.subjectgecko
dc.subjectrelict
dc.titleYoung relicts and old relicts: a novel palaeoendemic vertebrate from the Australian Central Uplands
dc.typeJournal article
local.identifier.citationvolume3
dcterms.dateAccepted2016-09-06
dc.date.issued2016-10-05
local.identifier.ariespublicationa383154xPUB4447
local.publisher.urlhttp://rsob.royalsocietypublishing.org/
local.type.statusPublished Version
local.contributor.affiliationOliver, Paul M., Division of Ecology and Evolution, CoS Research School of Biology, The Australian National University
local.identifier.essn2054-5703
local.bibliographicCitation.issue10
local.bibliographicCitation.startpage160018
local.identifier.doi10.1098/rsos.160018
dcterms.accessRightsOpen Access
CollectionsANU Research Publications

Download

File Description SizeFormat Image
01 Oliver P M and McDonald P J Young relicts and 2016.pdf1.87 MBAdobe PDFThumbnail


Items in Open Research are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

Updated:  17 November 2022/ Responsible Officer:  University Librarian/ Page Contact:  Library Systems & Web Coordinator